I joined Goblin purposefully to join friends. They joined it purposefully to avoid the massive hordes of people. I know of people who transferred OUT of Balmung because it's overly crowded. Yes, it has it perks, but a smaller pop size has it's perks too. We had a small FC transfer to Goblin to join ours and all of them were quite happy with our market prices (because not as much competition, prices stay higher and still sell). We still have houses available and they are not super high priced like the high pop servers. We know a lot of people in game and recognize players all the time wherever we go. Not everyone is looking to join high pop servers honestly.